Dr Flore Samaran, Associate Professor

Affiliation

Contact details

Telephone: +33 (0)2 98 34 88 56

Fax: +33 (0)2 98 34 89 35

email: flore.samaran@ensta-bretagne.fr

Personal webpage: under development

Research interests

I use passive acoustic monitoring to study the acoustic behaviour and ecology of elusive marine mammals (from harbour porpoises to blue whales) from their calls or clicks over long periods. My research focuses on providing information on seasonal and spatial patterns of animals in remote areas or in sensitive habitats and, ultimately, their interactions with the marine environment.

My work on baleen whales has been focused on the southern Indian Ocean (low and mid latitudes). I use passive acoustic methods to determine the seasonal occurrence, distribution pattern and change over time of Antarctic blue whales, pygmy blue whales and fin whales using long term acoustic recordings across widespread sites.

Working together within the IWC-SORP Acoustic Trends Steering Group (ATG) allows us to enhance our collective understanding of the links between the Southern Ocean and mid-latitudes habitats of blue and fin whales, in order to obtain a global picture of their distribution across the Southern Hemisphere. However, this picture can only be achieved when standardized, or at least comparable, methods for analysis are used. This is one of the challenges of the IWC-SORP Acoustic Trends Steering faces and my role is to coordinate the work of the group so that we all contribute to improving each step of the passive acoustic monitoring process chain to answer our research questions.